Letter: Bush making all wrong moves

Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2003 | 9:02 a.m.

With the country facing a depression, unemployment, soaring debt, nuclear proliferation in Korea, a guerilla war along the Afghanistan-Pakistan boarder, and threat of terrorists on the home front, President Bush blithely goes on cutting taxes for his rich corporate buddies while threatening war with Iraq. This is idiocy.

We are being treated like dumb sheep waiting to be shorn. Common sense says his ideas for reviving the economy are absurd. Corporations don't use tax savings to expand factories and create jobs in a depression when people don't have money to buy their goods and services. They park their money in a safe haven until times are better.

Global corporations have added another stumbling block for recovery since the Great Depression of the 1930s. They have moved factories to other countries where labor is cheap. About everything I buy now has a "Made in China" label. This means workers in other countries benefit from the factory expansion, if any -- not us.

With a snowballing number of people out of work, the need now is for jobs. Extension of unemployment compensation is a needed stopgap for many but it does not solve their long-run family problem -- finding a good job.

Instead of doing something about providing jobs, Bush cut taxes, cut down on public services, poured money into military hardware and build-up, thumbed his nose at the U.N. and the rest of the world, and said we will fight Iraq alone. He failed to add, "and pay for it alone." Security of any country rests as much on fair treatment of its citizens -- all its citizens -- as on military might.

PAUL GWIN